The Grim Side of Science: The Barbaric Experiment on Monkeys and Slaves | HO!!!!

In February of 1847, the Medical College of South Carolina quietly executed a transaction unlike anything previously recorded in Charleston’s medical history. For a sum nearly triple the standard rental rate, the college purchased the use of twenty-three enslaved men, women, and children—a number large enough to draw whispered curiosity even among Charleston’s elite. No explanation was offered. None was asked. The plantation owners who leased their human property accepted the unusually generous payment and signed contracts containing only one curious stipulation: the subjects were never to be resold within South Carolina again.

Three months later, the twenty-three returned.

Twelve could walk.

Seven required assistance.

Four had stopped speaking entirely.

All were physically and psychologically altered in ways their owners could not explain. And the college, with chilling efficiency, paid every owner in full—along with additional bonuses ensuring their silence.

For more than a century, the question of what happened inside the Medical College’s basement in the winter of 1847 remained one of Charleston’s most carefully suppressed secrets. Faculty archives were sealed. The basement later bricked up. Students who had assisted the research left almost no public accounts. Generations passed before a single, nearly forgotten error—made during a midnight procedure—began unraveling the truth.

Today, the story stands as one of the most disturbing chapters in the intersection of American medicine, slavery, and the lure of scientific ambition.

This is the grim, documented account of the experiment that used monkeys and enslaved human beings in parallel trials—an experiment that shattered lives, careers, and, ultimately, the college itself.

Charleston in 1847: A City Built on Wealth—and Silence

In the mid-19th century, Charleston presented itself as a thriving jewel of the American South. Its harbor bustled with merchant vessels; its stately homes on Meeting and King Streets signaled wealth accumulated through rice, cotton, and human bondage. And towering over Queen Street stood the Medical College of South Carolina, a Greek Revival institution where the sons of the state’s richest families trained to become physicians.

But beneath the polished façade, the college occupied a precarious moral position. Charleston’s elite supported medical learning but whispered about the “dark things” that happened after sunset—deliveries of bodies, late-night dissections, and the muffled sounds that sometimes carried from basement windows.

The college’s dean, Horus Rutledge, insisted that progress required sacrifice. His star faculty member, Dr. Edmund Carroway, believed that sacrifice should have no limits.

Carroway, 38 years old and recently relocated from Philadelphia, possessed a sharp, restless mind and an obsession with one question dominating 19th-century medical discourse:

Did the physical and neurological differences between races extend to the nervous system itself?

Southern physicians had economic incentives to believe they did. A theory suggesting enslaved Africans felt less pain supported plantation discipline, harsher labor, and even medical practice that minimized anesthetics.

Carroway intended to prove it scientifically.

The Study That Should Never Have Happened

In January 1847, Carroway presented a plan to Dean Rutledge:

Three groups of subjects

Identical experimental conditions

Pain studies, healing studies, drug-response studies

Anatomical comparisons

The groups were:

Enslaved African men, women, and children

Twelve rhesus monkeys imported from India

Poor white subjects from the Charleston almshouse

Rutledge approved the first two groups but rejected the third. Experimenting on white paupers, he argued, would risk public outrage. The enslaved subjects, however, had no legal rights. Their owners could authorize any procedure.

In February, the college purchased the use of 23 enslaved individuals—people sent by owners who considered them troublesome, injured, or simply expendable.

Carroway did not record their names.

He assigned them numbers.

No. 7 was a woman later identified as Dina—a literate, soft-spoken house servant who had been punished for teaching enslaved children to read.
No. 12 was Marcus, a skilled blacksmith.
No. 19 was James, a boy no older than 15, sold after his mother’s death.

The twelve monkeys, labeled A through L, were housed in cages in a side chamber. Their panicked shrieks echoed constantly through the basement.

The room smelled of fear long before the experiments began.

The First Phase: Pain Trials

Carroway’s initial experiments focused on measuring “pain thresholds.”

Three times a week, enslaved subjects and monkeys were strapped to examination tables. Students recorded responses as Carroway administered:

Needle pricks of increasing depth

Heated metal instruments

Pressures applied to ribs and joints

Exposure to freezing water

Noxious vapors

The monkeys screamed at the slightest provocation, throwing themselves against their restraints with primal terror. Their reactions were immediate and unfiltered.

The enslaved subjects, conditioned by lifetimes of violence, often remained silent—eyes clenched shut, bodies tensed, but mouths closed.

Carroway interpreted this silence as proof.

His students knew better.

One assistant, Thomas Pinckney, quietly warned Carroway:

“Sir, enslaved people learn not to cry out. Showing pain invites punishment.”

Carroway dismissed him.

“We are measuring involuntary responses, Mr. Pinckney. Do not confuse observation with sentiment.”

Chart after chart filled with Carroway’s conclusions: Negro subjects demonstrate significantly reduced pain sensitivity compared to Simeon species.

To him, the interpretation was not merely scientific—it was ideological.

The Second Phase: Wound and Healing Experiments

By March, the experiments escalated.

Carroway created controlled injuries:

Cuts

Burns

Abrasions

Deep punctures

He compared healing rates between monkeys and enslaved individuals. The humans healed faster, a physiological fact later understood as the result of lifelong immune adaptation under brutal conditions.

To Carroway, the results indicated another “racial difference.”

No. 12, the blacksmith Marcus, attempted to explain to Pinckney:

“We heal quick because we must. If we don’t get better fast, we get replaced—or whipped for falling behind.”

Pinckney recorded the comment in his notes.

Carroway crossed it out.

The Third Phase: Chemical Exposure

As spring approached, Carroway began administering substances:

Plant extracts

Mercury compounds

Nightshade derivatives

Stimulants and sedatives

Burned mineral powders

Monkeys frothed and convulsed. Several died.

No. 8, a woman in her thirties, received a dose that killed the monkey tested the previous day. She survived but lost her memory for three days.

Carroway misinterpreted again:

“Human subject demonstrates superior resistance to chemical toxins.”

He ignored:

The difference in weight

Species-specific metabolism

Basic pharmacology

His conclusions already existed before the data.

The experiments were simply a vehicle to justify them.

Rising Resistance: The Network Moves

While Carroway tortured his subjects, a parallel drama unfolded elsewhere in Charleston.

A house servant named Samuel, who worked in the college offices, noticed discarded papers bearing the names and numbers of people he knew. His wife recognized no. 19—James—from Goose Creek.

Samuel listened at doors. He watched who entered the basement. He tracked shipments of animals and chemicals.

And he carried that information into Charleston’s enslaved communication network—a sophisticated system of whispered messages, shared codes, and church-based relay.

Within weeks, several free Black residents and the respected minister Rev. Morris Brown knew something dark was happening in the basement.

Brown could not appeal to the law.

But he could try to appeal to conscience.

The First Break in the Wall

Dina—No. 7—had quietly observed student assistant Pinckney. He seemed uneasy, conflicted, unlike the coldly efficient Gadsden.

One day, when Pinckney was alone in the holding room, she approached him at enormous personal risk.

“Sir, you have a good heart. You know this ain’t right. You write everything down—those papers could show people what he’s doing.”

Pinckney resisted at first.

“I could be expelled—even arrested.”

Dina held his gaze.

“Twenty-three of us will die here if you don’t. You still get to choose. We don’t.”

Pinckney broke.

He stole several pages from Carroway’s files—enough to expose the structure of the experiment—and handed them to his Quaker landlady, Elizabeth Simmons.

Within weeks, those papers reached abolitionist Angelina Grimké in Philadelphia.

In early June, the Philadelphia Public Ledger published the first article under the headline:

HORRIFIC MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS IN CHARLESTON

The story ignited a firestorm.

Charleston Erupts

Northern papers condemned the college. Southern planters defended it. The college trustees panicked.

Dean Rutledge urged halting the study and quietly dismissing Carroway. But powerful planters insisted on standing firm:

“Scientific inquiry must not bow to abolitionist hysteria.”

The compromise:

Experiments paused

Subjects to be returned

Carroway temporarily shielded

But Carroway sensed time slipping away.

He made one final, catastrophic decision.

June 11, 1847: The Midnight Procedure

Near midnight, fueled by desperation and a mind fraying under pressure, Carroway returned alone to the basement.

He selected No. 12—Marcus for what he termed a “terminal neurological examination.”

Marcus later described the moment:

“He strapped me down and started cutting before the drugs took hold. I could feel everything—his tools touching my nerves.”

Carroway’s notes from that night are splattered with blood.

At some point during the procedure, he severed an artery.

Marcus nearly bled to death.

Carroway panicked, dragged the unconscious man into the holding room, and ordered Dina and the others to “keep him alive.”

Then he fled.

In the morning, Pinckney found the basement looking like a slaughter pit.

The scandal could no longer be contained.

The Inquiry: The City Confronts Itself

The college trustees convened an inquiry. It lasted nine days.

Witnesses included:

Pinckney

Gadsden

Several enslaved subjects

Dean Rutledge

And finally, a trembling, unraveling Dr. Carroway

Dina described the experiments with unwavering restraint. Marcus, still gravely injured, testified from a chair.

Their presence in a formal proceeding was unprecedented. The panel struggled to process their words.

One member asked Dina whether she had consented.

Her answer became one of the inquiry’s most quoted lines:

“Sir, I’m property. Ain’t no such thing as consent for me.”

When the panel questioned Carroway, he defended everything:

“All medical progress requires sacrifice. Their suffering produced knowledge.”

When asked whether he felt remorse:

“Remorse? For scientific research? Should surgeons apologize for cutting into flesh?”

The decision came swiftly.

The inquiry declared Carroway’s research:

Methodologically invalid

Scientifically worthless

Ethically abhorrent

A gross abuse of human subjects

He was expelled.

His papers were sealed.

The basement was shuttered.

Aftermath: A Legacy of Harm
The Enslaved Survivors

The 23 subjects were returned to their owners:

Marcus was sold to a textile mill; he escaped during the Civil War and lived until 1879.

Dina was sold to a merchant family in Mobile and survived until emancipation.

James—the 15-year-old who lost his speech—was sent to a turpentine camp and died within a year.

Their stories lived mostly in oral histories, passed quietly among descendants.

Pinckney’s Exile

Pinckney, shunned in Charleston, moved north. He built a modest practice and spent a lifetime treating patients of all races with unusual compassion.

He refused to speak publicly about the basement.

Carroway’s Final Collapse

Carroway drifted through the South for twelve years—first Georgia, then Alabama, then Texas. He never again obtained a teaching post.

He died of cholera in San Antonio in 1859.

The College’s Attempt to Forget

The basement laboratory was sealed behind brick in 1889. For nearly a century, no one entered the rooms where the screams had once echoed.

Rediscovery: The 1982 Revelation

In 1982, during renovations at what had become the Medical University of South Carolina, workers opened a forgotten section of the basement.

Inside, they found:

Rusted surgical tables still bolted to the floor

Drainage channels for blood and fluids

Cabinet hardware

Scratched stone walls

And a sealed box containing Carroway’s journals

The university was forced to confront a history it had buried for generations.

It hosted ethics symposia.
It issued formal acknowledgments.
It began teaching this history to future physicians.

But even today, the rooms remain closed to the public—accessible only for specialized educational programs.

What Carroway’s Journals Revealed

His handwriting was meticulous. His tone clinical. His moral detachment staggering.

One entry, dated April 3, 1847, reads:

“Subjects sometimes display expressions resembling fear or hatred. These are likely misinterpretations; they cannot possess such complex emotional responses.”

Another:

“Anthropomorphizing enslaved subjects represents a primary obstacle to objective research.”

Historians recognized immediately what Carroway had done:

He built a scientific framework to justify torture.

He used “rigor” as a shield.

He used numbers to erase people.

He believed cruelty became legitimacy if dressed in careful measurements.

Why This Story Matters Today

Carroway’s experiment was not an isolated horror—it was a precursor.

Across American history, vulnerable populations have repeatedly been used in the name of science:

The Tuskegee syphilis study

Forced sterilizations

Cold War radiation experiments

Early 20th-century asylum trials

Carroway represents an early link in a long chain of abuses built on the same beliefs:

that some human beings matter less than others
and that science, when unchecked, can become the perfect tool for moral blindness.

One ethics professor at MUSC put it best:

“Carroway didn’t create cruelty.
He simply applied the logic of slavery to medicine.”

The Survivors Speak

Three of the enslaved subjects lived long enough to give testimony in the late 19th century.

Marcus (No. 12)

Interviewed in 1879:

“Most folks don’t want to hear it. Makes them uncomfortable.
But someone needs to know what happened.
What people can do when they decide others ain’t people.”

Dina (No. 7)

Interviewed 1881:

“He was evil.
And the ones who let him do it?
Evil too.
Wasn’t one monster—was a whole system of monsters.”

Ruth (No. 11)

Interviewed 1876:

“Some things shouldn’t be repeated.
But they will be.
Because he wrote everything down—
as if he was proud.”

Conclusion: The Darkest Side of Scientific Curiosity

The story of the Medical College of South Carolina’s 1847 experiment is not merely a historical curiosity—it is a warning.

It shows how:

Intelligence can serve cruelty

Education can rationalize inhumanity

Institutions can permit atrocities when systems incentivize blindness

Scientific ambition can be weaponized against the powerless

And it reminds us that the greatest horrors in scientific history did not occur because researchers lacked knowledge.

They occurred because researchers lacked empathy.

**Carroway was not a madman.

He was a respected physician.
A rising academic star.
A man entrusted with power.**

That, historians argue, is what makes his story truly terrifying.

Because if such atrocities can grow in the polished halls of a respected medical school under the guise of scientific rigor, they can appear anywhere—unless the past is confronted openly and remembered.

The basement remains quiet now.
The journals lie in climate-controlled archives.
But the lessons endure.

And so does the haunting question:

What happens to science when the humanity of its subjects is considered optional?